As a young man in the Midwest many years ago, my father sometimes hitchhiked from his home to college and back. On a cold day, while standing on the side of the road as cars kept speeding by, he swore that if he ever had a car he would pick up every hitchhiker he saw.
One day he picked up a hitcher with a wicker basket. When my father noticed something seemed to be moving inside — and learned the basket was filled with snakes — he hit the brakes and was soon driving on his own again.
My father admired Saint Francis, the patron of animals, whose feast day is Oct. 4. Inspired by the saint, he wanted to believe all animals were God’s creatures — but snakes remained his personal exception.
Nonetheless, the experience didn’t deter him from picking up other hitchikers, which leads to another story.
One day in 1941, after my father had moved to the East Coast, he was passing through Trenton on his way to Perth Amboy, where my mother lived. They were dating at the time. On the way, my father picked up a hitchhiker he described as “a fine young man about 22 years of age.”
The hitcher had an emotional and uplifting life story. An orphan, he had been raised in Boys Town, Nebraska, and was making his way to New England to visit his sister.
Boys Town was so renowned at the time that only a few years earlier, in 1938, Hollywood released a fictionalized movie based on the orphanage. It was titled, simply, “Boys Town.” A sequel, “Men of Boys Town,” was in theaters in 1941, the same year my father met the former resident of the famous orphanage.
Both films starred Spencer Tracy as the Irish-born Father Edward Flanagan, who founded the home for boys in 1917. Mickey Rooney co-starred as an incorrigible youth who is reformed by the love and support he receives there.
So moved was my father by the hitcher’s story that instead of dropping him off to flag another ride, he took him to meet my mother and her family. They welcomed him warmly and were all impressed by his manners, his inspirational life and his general likeability. The only exception was Daisy, my mother’s German Shepherd, who could be territorial. She sat by my mother’s side throughout the pleasantries, coffee and snacks.
Afterward, my parents took the young man to New York and even bought him a bus ticket to Boston, so he could be reunited with his sister.
The next day my mother couldn’t imagine what had happened when the hitchhiker came back to see her. He started to explain — but Daisy’s former canine wariness turned to outright hostility.
Without finishing his explanation, he left as abruptly and unexpectedly as he came, and my parents never heard from him again. But soon they read about him in the newspaper when he became, for a short time, famous.
His name was George Joseph Cvek. He was a thief, serial rapist and killer.
Police came to know him as “The Aspirin Bandit.” He ingratiated himself with strangers and then returned to the house when he knew a woman would be alone. After a little conversation, he would ask the woman if she had any aspirin and then overpower her when her back was turned. He admitted to more than a dozen assaults in the New York City area and was suspected of dozens more.
Cvek often told some variation of his fictional Boys Town story and, to reinforce the tale, would sometimes drop a postcard in the mail to Father Flanagan. (The orphanage administrators had been puzzled by this stream of postcards they received, each one with the priest’s name misspelled.)
Not long after my father picked up Cvek up on the side of the road, he was arrested and convicted of the murder of Catherine “Kitty” Pappas in New York City. The wife of a prosperous businessman, Mrs. Pappas was an Egyptian immigrant, a quiet and shy woman who rarely left her apartment except to go to church.
The jury took only 20 minutes to convict Cvek of first degree murder. He was executed in Sing Sing Prison on Feb. 26, 1942.
My parents were married in 1945, and I was born 10 years later. I grew up with two loving parents, with a wonderful older sister and — always — with at least one loyal and noisy dog in the house.
Carl Peters is managing editor of the Catholic Star Herald.
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